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Brazil

Coral reefs are diverse ecosystems that support fisheries, control coastline erosion, provide tourism opportunities and serve as a potential source for medically important compounds. Penn State biologist Todd LaJeunesse is part of an international team that is studying coral-algal symbiosis and the impacts of environmental stresses on coral reefs worldwide.

In this last of three dispatches from Northeast Brazil, Todd LaJuenesse and colleagues dive for coral in in Joao Pessoa. Researchers at Penn State, the University of Georgia and Universidade Federal de Campina Grande are embarking on a quest to document the uniqueness of Brazil's coral species by studying the symbiotic algae that they require to survive. In addition, they will investigate the evolutionary biology of the coral-algal symbiosis to see if they can uncover secrets about the organisms' ancient histories and their potential to withstand the ravages of climate change.

Join Todd LaJeunesse, assistant professor of biology at Penn State, and his colleagues from University of Georgia and Universidade Federal de Campina Grande as they collect coral and algae samples at Praia do Forte beach in Salvador, Brazil. Their goal: to uncover secrets about the organisms' ancient histories and their potential to withstand the ravages of climate change. Part 2 of a 3-part series.

Coral communities worldwide are suffering from diseases, pollution and global warming, but Brazil's reef system is one of the few that has managed to escape noticeable damage - at least for now. Researchers at Penn State, the University of Georgia, and Universidade Federal de Campina Grande are embarking on a quest to document the uniqueness of Brazil's coral species by studying the symbiotic algae that they require to survive. In addition, they will investigate the evolutionary biology of the coral-algal symbiosis to see if they can uncover secrets about the organisms' ancient histories and their potential to withstand the ravages of climate change.
For 10 days in November, the scientists will swim along the reef-line - that border between the protected inner shore and the high seas - taking biopsies of coral tissue that contain the symbiotic algae. They then will analyze the samples in a laboratory. The team's expectations for identifying unique combinations of coral and algae are high. After all, the region is celebrated for its abundant, endemic sea life, including over 14 species of sharks; the scientists are keenly aware of the need to watch their backs while they work on the ocean bottom.
Stay tuned for dispatches and photos from Salvador, Recife and Joao Pessoa in the coming week!

The vast Amazon rainforest teeming with exotic animals. Beautiful, bronzed people basking on white-sand beaches. Carnival-goers sipping lime-and-sugar-infused Caipirinhas while swaying to the rhythms of samba. Brazil is known for many things, but the country only recently is gaining recognition for one of its most important natural treasures: its coral reefs.

When Penn State ecologist Chris Uhl started working in Amazonia in the mid-1970s, the prognosis for the region was unrelievedly grim. At the time, Uhlís colleagues were stressing the terrible fragility of the rainforest ecosystem—its delicate balance of plants and animals, its thin, poor soils. Collision with humanity, they feared, would simply be the end of it.

While we were waiting for the bus in downtown Belém, Paulo Barreto smiled.

"Now we are going back in time, a hundred years," he said, and laughed, a high, nervous laugh. We were headed south to Paragominas, a logging center in the heart of the eastern Amazon. Barreto, a young, bespectacled Brazilian forester who splits his time between studying for his Ph.D. at Yale and working at IMAZON, a small environmental research center headquartered near Belém, was taking me to visit a pilot project.

"The thing we miss most when we come here," a Brazilian graduate student told me earnestly about studying in the United States, "is good food." After spending just a week in Brazil last summer, I know exactly what he means.

"Perhaps one in 10 to one in 20 species in the tropics are known to science. How can conservation work in the face of this degree of ignorance? How can economic development be guided in a more benign direction?"

"When I consider the excessively small amount of labor required in this country [Amazonia] to convert the virgin forest into green meadows and fertile plantations, I almost long to come over with half a dozen friends disposed to work and enjoy the country; and show the inhabitants how soon an earthly paradise might be created." —Alfred Wallace, 19th-century British naturalist

"We should need little reminder of Francis Bacon's insight: ‘Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.' To keep development in harmony with natural forces and resources, we must apply that lesson on the largest scale—from the planning stage through the execution of every project."—Barber Conable, President of the World Bank (1986)